Cruise line experiments with seven-day voyages

In a sign that cruises could be getting shorter for a certain type of clientele, Oceania Cruises says it plans to offer a handful of seven-night voyages in 2012. This will be a short-break product aimed mainly at couples wanting to have a week away.In what will be Oceania’s 10th year of operations, the line’s executives told travel agents during a preview sailing of its new ship, the 1,250-passenger Marina, that there was strong demand for shorter cruises.By doing offering seven-day cruises, the line will be making a break with tradition as its focus until now has been exclusively on sailings of at least 10 nights, mainly for passengers over the age of 55.However, Oceania is just testing the waters as there will be only a few short voyages at first, with three seven-day departures scheduled for 2012, and they will initially take place only in Europe.“We’ve been asked so many times about doing seven-day cruises and we’ve never wanted to enter that market,” James Rodriguez, Oceania’s senior vice president for marketing said. “But we’re going to experiment. We’re going to give it a try.”USA Today[pictured: Oceania Marina]